US wary of Pakistan intelligence services' links to al-Qa'ida By Robert Fisk in Islamabad
The FBI is becoming almost as distrustful of its Pakistani counterpart as the CIA is of the warlords across the border in Afghanistan.
During the trial of journalist Daniel Pearl's murderers -- which ended with the conviction of the British public schoolboy Omar Sheikh -- one small but disturbing fact never made its way into the headlines: that one of the co-accused was a former Pakistani police officer. The final testimony of the trial -- released only yesterday morning -- must owe something to his evidence.
It revealed, for example, that Mr Pearl made two escape attempts from his captors and that it was this which prompted them to murder him. Three Yemenis were brought in to perform his throat-cutting. But all we know of the ex-cop is that -- even at the time of his arrest -- he was still working for the Pakistan Special Branch.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful state institution which helped arm Afghan fighters against the Soviets and then supported the Taliban, was supposedly reformed once the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, joined President George Bush's "war on terrorism".
Few in Pakistan believe it. There are rumours, for example, that intelligence officers helped to hide three al-Qa'ida members after a gun battle in a village in Waziristan, in the border tribal territories on 25 June in which 10 soldiers were killed. US agents in Pakistan suspect that several of their raids on remote villages in Waziristan were betrayed to al-Qa'ida operatives in advance. Since then, both the FBI and the Pakistan army have preferred not to inform local police officers of their activities.
Although authorities in Islamabad insist that US forces cannot operate alone inside Pakistani territory, recent reports suggest the contrary. Last week, for example, three Pakistani tribesmen were apparently picked up by US troops from the border town of Angoor Adda and flown across the frontier to the US base at Birmal in Afghanistan. It also appears that American forces have been using their old Afghan device of handing out wads of cash in return for local tribal loyalty.
If Pakistan can deny America is waging an undercover war on its territory, it is far more difficult to conceal the involvement of a police Rangers inspector, Waseem Akhtar, in the conspiracy to murder General Musharraf during his visit to Karachi on 26 April. And there is evidence that the explosives to be used in the failed attack were subsequently employed in the suicide bombing of the US con- sulate in Karachi on 14 June.
Because of the past co-operation between the Taliban -- and by extension al-Qa'ida and Pakistan's intelligence services -- many Pakistan Special Branch and Field Security Wing officers are working blind, forced to build up entirely new files on militants who remain well known to elements of the ISI. Only patient police work in Karachi, for instance, uncovered hitherto unknown connections between Islamist and secular groups, leading to a series of arrests.
All in all, the civil police and the Americans might learn more by talking to the ISI. But no one is sure for whom their individual members work.